Hadrian has echoes today

By Jeremy Lovell

LONDON, July 22 (Reuters Life!) - He had his fingers burned in ancient Iraq, fought insurrections on several fronts and built a huge wall to protect a fractious frontier, but still had time to boost the economy and leave major artistic legacies.

Many of the trials and tribulations that faced Rome's emperor Hadrian nearly 2,000 years ago still resonate today.

"The conflict zones in Hadrian's day are the conflict zones of today," said Thorsten Opper, curator of a new exhibition, "Hadrian - Empire and conflict" at London's British Museum.

"Within days if not hours of coming to power he withdrew the Roman army from Mesopotamia -- present day Iraq," said Opper, noting similarities between the wall he built in northern Britain and that being built by Israel in the West Bank.

"It has echoes in today's West Bank Wall. Both have control points, watchtowers and are designed to keep people apart and restrict movement," he said.

But those are not the only similarities. When Hadrian came to power in AD 117 with an empire stretching from modern day Egypt in the south to Britain in the north and Spain in the west to Iraq in the east there was turmoil everywhere.

Hadrian, best known in Britain for his wall, in Rome for the Pantheon and in Israel for his bloody suppression of the Jewish revolt in AD 132/6 was a controversial but largely overlooked ruler who stabilised a crumbling empire.

Hugely popular with the soldiery and whose reforms of the armed forces remained the bible of the Roman Army for over a century, Hadrian was also a highly cultured man who was not without controversy.